Local/global Approach to Nonlinear Simulation of Compliant Marine Structures

Book excerpt: This report presents reliable techniques for modeling extremely compliant structures. The research focuses on severe geometric nonlinearities associated with very large displacements and rotations. The solution requires two major modeling improvements: formulation of well-conditioned finite elements and development of specific control strategies for nonlinear step-by-step solution. Inherent in the physics of the structure, natural events condition the new finite elements. Associated event control directs the numerical solution to adhere closely to the true nonlinear structural response path. The numerical strategies are a simple extension of the trapezoidal rule for time integration and Newton iteration for nonlinear step-by-step solution. The result is extremely fast, efficient, and stable nonlinear structural simulation. A high level of computational robustness is essential for development of fully nonlinear substructured models. A local/global approach allows each substructure to have its own specialized local submodel and its own associated local solution strategy. A global model then integrates all the super-element representations of each diverse submodel. The local/global framework allows the nonlinear solution strategies to efficiently concentrate computational power where and when needed among the submodels. Code development and test problems focus primarily on compliant marine structures, where the need for robust, highly nonlinear simulation is so great.